Cannot start mysqld (Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Incorrect file format 'host' )

Are you seeing - Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Incorrect file format 'host' ?

Following is what I did -

• removed mysql-server (#yum remove mysql-*)
• re-installed mysql-server (#yum install mysql-server)
• #cd /var/lib/mysql/mysql
• #rm -rf *
• #mysql_install_db

and then,

#service mysqld start

It worked!